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Displaced, 'surplus' Memphis City Schools teachers accept jobs outside of specialty
Reader Comment:
"And on Monday, the board is expected to approve a three-year, $1.4 million deal with Memphis Teacher Residency, a teacher certification program that pays $12,000 annual stipends to nonteachers who complete one-year master's degrees and pledge to work three years in the city schools"
Is it even legal for them to enter into a 3 year contract? How on earth is this possible?
Reader Comment: The truth is STARS staffs teacher positions and MCS has allowed a vendor to come in (thanks to The Gates Foundation) & discredit district employees and basically put MCS in this position. STARS was allowed to hire hundreds of TFA and MTF and new teachers outside of MEMPHIS while surplus teachers sit and wait. They called the surplus teachers "level 1 & level 2" teachers---Gates and MEA are working to together to allow this to happen. The question is...who allowed this to happen. In order to take the Gates $$$ "we had get into bed" with The New Teacher Project, The Parathon Group & many many more under the table deals.
Out of towners come to Town and do anything at the expense of our Memphis children.
Ohanian Comment: Here's the Memphis school superintendent's reaction to receipt of a $90 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation--and the Foundation's reaction to Memphis:
"This is huge, this is huge, this puts Memphis City Schools in very elite territory, on the front page of the nation," said an exultant Supt. Kriner Cash, adding that teachers were the "most important single factor in the education of a child". . . .
Colleen Oliver, Gates Foundation senior program officer, described Memphis' proposal as "one of the greatest, boldest and most thoughtful plans" Gates has seen.
--Memphis Commercial Appeal, Nov. 18, 2009
Here's how they will "raise the teaching level":
The city schools will use $1.9 million to video the work of 1,000 teachers under the guidance of Harvard economist Thomas Kane.
The videos will help supply groundwork for the seven-year project to raise the teaching level in Memphis City Schools. Under the plan, the most talented teachers will be moved quickly to inner-city classrooms where they are needed the most, in hopes of ending the system’s decades-long rut of dismal achievement records.
The district will redesign how it evaluates teachers under the $155 million endeavor, funded primarily by the foundation and supported by the Memphis Education Association, the teachers union.
How are they going to evaluate that history teacher put in charge of the Algebra II class?
Reader Comment: This problem was exacerbated by the millions awarded through Race-To-The-Top . All of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's friends came a calling once this money reached Tennessee. The new TEI teacher evaluation process is one example. Its specifics were written by his Ivy League friends from Harvard and from other contacts back in Chicago. I attended two sessions led by these folks at the recent Practitioner's Summit at Bellevue Baptist who were proud to be on Arne's team while lauding all of the reform being done in Tennessee.
These reforms are more about the money than serving children as best I can tell.
Reader Comment: What we're seeing in Memphis, in Tennessee, and across the nation is the privatization of public education by businessmen and politicians who truly do not understand what schooling and education are.
By Jane Roberts
Memphis City Schools principals have been told to fill classroom vacancies from a pool of displaced teachers -- rather than new hires -- as the district tries to cut overstaffing by the end of the month.
"This should have been done months ago," said Keith Williams, president of the Memphis Education Association.
"The schools are overstaffed. In the past, we have always placed surplus teachers before hiring additional staff," Williams said.
MCS had 550 displaced teachers this spring and summer resulting from drops in school enrollment, higher student-to-teacher ratios and new hires being moved in. Four out of five of these teachers have found permanent jobs in the district.
Those that remain, Supt. Kriner Cash said, are working as substitutes, teacher assistants or administrative support.
But Williams says they are being assigned to subjects they are not certified to teach and in some cases are being asked to do custodial work.
One teacher, who is not being identified to protect his job, said he moved back across the country to Memphis two weeks before school started when the district asked him to return after firing him in July with 45 other English and history teachers.
He is teaching Algebra 2 for a teacher scheduled to start next week and the rest of the day looks for ways to be useful, including covering cafeteria duty.
"The kids haven't had a math teacher all week; it makes my job tougher because I'm not a math teacher.
"But I am not complaining. I am not going to sit there and let the kids do nothing, but I could do that if I wanted."
If the overstaffing persists past Sept. 2 when the first official enrollment count is reported, the school board likely will be asked to approve money for additional salaries or lay off teachers again.
"Someone will have to show me the numbers. They are going to have to be air-tight, and there is going to have to be a rational explanation because my credibility means something too," said board member Sara Lewis, expecting to take a pounding from skeptical parents and City Council members.
School officials say the staffing issue is a result of unstable funding and the school board's commitment to keeping its best teachers while also hiring fresh, outside talent.
Cash told the school board this week that half the teachers in the surplus pool have been on the list since spring, giving them numerous chances to participate in job fairs the district provides for them.
Ten percent have missed 10 or more days of work in two of the last three years. Another 10 percent have not attended any of job placement events the district offers displaced teachers.
Williams says Cash is publicly impugning the character of teachers who are displaced in part because the district hired 108 recruits through its contract with Teach for America.
And on Monday, the board is expected to approve a three-year, $1.4 million deal with Memphis Teacher Residency, a teacher certification program that pays $12,000 annual stipends to nonteachers who complete one-year master's degrees and pledge to work three years in the city schools.
Memphis Teaching Fellows is a similar alternative certification program run by the city schools. The district hired 89 of those members this summer.
— Jane Roberts
Memphis Commercial Appeal
2011-08-13
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/aug/13/mcs-hiring-instructors-in-surplus-inventory/
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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